In the morning, it seemed that their erstwhile charge was determined to take care of the problem by attaching herself to them.
They woke to find her busily cleaning both their swords -- though what she'd made of finding Need beside her when she woke was anyone's guess. Tarma's armor lay neatly stacked, having already been put in good order, and their clothes had been brushed and laid ready. The girl had both pairs of boots beside her, evidently prepared to clean them when she finished with the swords.
'What's all this about?' Tarma demanded, only half awake.
The girl jumped -- her lip quivered as she replied, looking ready to burst into tears again. 'Please, m'lady -- I want to go with ye when y' leave. Ye haven't a servant, I know. See? I c'n take good care of ye both. An' I can cook, too -- an' wash an' mend. I don' eat much, an' I don' need much. Please?'
'I was afraid this would happen,' Kethry murmured. 'Look, Fallan, we really can't take you with us -- we don't need a servant --' She stopped as the girl burst into tears again, and sighed with resignation. '-- oh, Bright Lady. 'All right, we'll take you with us. But it won't be forever, just until we can find you a new place.'
' 'Just until we can find you a new place.' She'ene-dra, I am beginning to think that this time that sword of yours has driven us too far. Three days on the road, and it's already beginning to seem like three years.'
Fallan had not adjusted well to the transition from chambermaid to wanderer. It wasn't that she hadn't tried -- but to her, citybred as she was, the wilderness was a place beset by unknown perils at every turn. Every snake, every insect was poisonous; she stayed up, kept awake by terror, for half of every night, listening to the sounds beyond their fire. Warrl and the mares terrified her.
They'd had to rescue her twice -- once from the river she'd fallen into, once from the bramble thicket she'd run into, thinking she heard a bear behind her. For Fallan, every strange crackle of brush meant a bear; one with Fallan-cutlets on his mind.
At the same time, she was stubbornly refusing to give up. Not once did she ask the two women to release her from her self-imposed servitude. No matter how frightened she became, she never confessed her fear, nor did she rush to one or the other of them for protection. It was as if she was determined to somehow prove -- to herself, to them, perhaps to both -- that she was capable of facing whatever they could.
'What that girl needs is a husband,' Kethry replied wearily. 'Give her things to do inside four walls, things she knows, and she's fine, but take her out here, and she's hopeless. If it weren't for the fact that the nearest town is days away, I'd even consider trying to get her another job at an inn.'
'And leave her open to the same thing that happened before? Face it, that's exactly what would happen. Poor Fallan is just not the type to sell her favors by choice, and not ugly enough to be left alone. Bless her heart, she's too obedient and honest for her own good -- and, unfortunately, not very bright. No solution, Greeneyes. Too bad most fanners around here don't need or can't afford woman servants, or --' she stopped with an idea suddenly occurring to her. Kethry had the same idea.
'Landric?'
'The very same. He seems kind enough --'
'No fear of that. He's Wheel-bound. When he took that tattoo, he took with it a vow to balance the evil he'd done previously with good. That's why he became a farmer, I suspect, to balance the death he'd sown as a soldier with life. Did his children look ill-treated?'
'Contrarywise. Healthiest, happiest bunch I've seen outside of a Clan gathering. The only trouble-'
'-is, does she know how to deal with younglings? Let's head for Landric's place. You can talk to her on the way, and we'll see how she handles them when we get there.'
Two days of backtracking saw them on the road within a few furlongs of Landric's farm. Landric's eldest spotted them as he had before and ran to tell his father. Landric met them on the road just where it turned up the path to his farmstead, his face wreathed in smiles.
'I had not thought to see you again, when the news came that the monster had been slain,' he told Tarma warmly.
'Then you also know that we arrived just a bit too late to do the slaying ourselves.'
'If I were to tell the truth, I'm just as grateful for your sake. The hero had a cadre of six hirelings, and all six of them died giving him the chance he needed. I would have been saddened had their fate been yours. Oh -- that little pet you left for the children has been beyond price.'
'If we'd gone down that thing's gullet, you wouldn't have been half as saddened as I!' Tarma chuckled. Out of
